It is 1709, and Europe is in the midst of the coldest winter for a century. France is suffering profoundly: with her people starving and her army rattled by mutiny and desertions, King Louis XIV is at The Hague, searching for peace with the English on almost any terms.

This is the second in a sequence of stand-alone novels with pivotal historical discoveries at their dramatic core - this instalment focussed on the lethal knowledge of gunpowder which made primitive cannon or 'crakys of war' possible